Personalization Is Always The Answer [Building In Public #7]

I learned a tough lesson this month. I hope you can learn from my mistakes instead of learning from your own.

Good morning. Happy Monday.

This is the seventh edition of my weekly “Building In Public” series. Each Monday I share with you my wins, losses, and lessons from the previous week.

These lessons are what I’ve learned on my journey to grow my personal holdings company to $10,000,000 a year.

LFG. 🔥

This issue is free for everyone, but if want behind the scenes access on creating multiple income streams, I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid member by subscribing below.

P.S. - I’m experimenting with a new format this week. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

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Personalization Is Always The Answer

I’m nervous to speak so personally about this side of my business, because I don’t want to come across as an amateur.

However, if I am truly committed to sharing the ins and outs of business building with you, that means I have to also be vulnerable and share the moments where I come up short.

So here goes.

As you know, two months ago, I started a coaching program.

I never planned on being a coach, but I received so many coaching requests from my readers and from people who follow me on social media. After enough people asked if I would coach them, I decided to give it a shot.

My Plan For Coaching

The deal I made with myself is that if I were to go forward with coaching, I didn’t want to be stuck on phone calls all day. So I created (what I thought) was a really good system in which I could communicate with my students asynchronously through loom and slack.

In my mind this was the best of both worlds because I could still provide 10X value while avoiding the aspect of coaching that involved me charging for my time.

I really believed that my plan was a good one and that people would fully buy into the idea of asynchronous coaching.

But, I was wrong.

There Is More To Coaching Than Just Information

It turns out my students were very interested in one on one conversation. They were looking for more than just feedback, market reports, data, and knowledge. They wanted insights from a person who had been there before.

They wanted to talk to me.

It’s not to say my students are looking for therapy or that they want to complain in my ear and tell me their problems. Rather, the nteractiveness (is that a word?) of conversation truly helps my students flush out their ideas and see different insights. It is these conversations that helps them make decisions.

The true differentiator between a successful entrepreneur and a wanna-be is the decisions they make.

At he end of the day, that’s the main objective of a business owner.

MAKE. THE. RIGHT. DECISIONS.

All of us have infinite options with what to do with our lives. Every day we make thousands of choices and these choices are the determining factor of where we end up.

So, it turns out that my original idea was a bad one, because it didn’t account for what is the main value add of coaching, which is assistance in decision making.

I Made A Change To My Program, And It’s Going To Be Great

After having this insight, I decided to add a weekly 30 minute zoom meeting to my program. So in addition to the 24/7 access to me via slack, my students and I also meet virtually to hash out important decisions, measure our progress, and set new goals for the week.

I realize this is not as scalable as I originally intended, but I know it’s the right thing to do.

But it turns out, I enjoy these weekly meetings.

There are so many talented people in the world. So far, every single person who has hired me for coaching is an exceptional person. These people have great ideas, great work ethic, great families, do the right thing, and inspire me with their talents.

I had this naive and uninformed idea that I would hate the weekly zoom meetings. But I had a preconceived idea of what that would look like, and it turns out that the zoom meetings are the best part.

I love talking to my students.

If I knew then what I know now, my coaching program would have had a much better start. I’m always hard on myself and so I hate that I came out the gate with a slightly flawed program, but my students and I have worked through it and now I am thrilled to say that we are operating at 10X.

Lesson learned.

I’m happy with the progress. The zoom meetings absolutely put a cap on the time I can spend doing coaching, as running my agency and working with clients is still a huge priority.

But it’s probably better this way.

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What I’m Reading

Jules and I are reading No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz.

It’s phenomenal.

The part so far that really stuck out to me is this idea that for most of humanity, we’ve operated under the idea that we all have one mind, or as Schwartz calls it “mono mind.”

Almost every religion in history sees impulses and ego as a part of our mind that we need to control. We’ve never stopped to think that all these different aspects of us are different parts with their own protective agendas.

Think about it. When you are observing yourself, in that simple scenario there is a you and then there is another you that is observing the you. When you look at these different parts, isn’t it clear that both of them have different objective, viewpoints, fears, and observations?

It’s a totally unique way of interacting with your psyche.

I highly recommend the book. It’s teaching Jules and I a lot about ourselves.

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What I Listened To

I thoroughly enjoyed this podcast with Jon Stewart, Kitty Richards, and Jason Furman.

In the episode. Stewart argues that the stimulus packages created during Covid weren’t that consequential in creating higher inflation, because when compared against the trillions of dollars of stimulus the government regularly gives to corporations, it’s really a drop in the bucket.

Furman, argues the counterpoint in a very condescending way, and Stewart, as usual, stands toe to toe in this very engaging conversation.

I love Jon Stewart. It’s incredible to me how well he can argue his viewpoints and go head to head with the smartest people in the world in any subject and any debate format.

In this particular example, he masterfully uses Furman’s condescension against him and still manages to drive home his final point.

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In Closing

Last week was one of the best weeks I’ve had in a long time.

Our home remodeling project is coming along great, we installed a Penguin Chiller into our ice bath (which means no more buying six bags of ice just to take our ice baths), and I’ve gained even more clarity on the future plans of my enterprise.

I’m always reminded how important it is to simply continue moving forward during difficult times.

The hard times don’t last, but neither do the good times. If you wake up every day and try to do a little bit better than you did yesterday, regardless of how you’re feeling, it’s inevitable that you will be successful and fulfilled.

Love you guys. Talk to you tomorrow.

Tim

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